Uncanny Intimacy calls us to imagine a radical rethinking of ecological ethics. By understanding existence as innately coexistence, we are asked to contemplate how ecologies might be better understood, better conserved and made flourish.

Uncanny Intimacy presents a hybrid 'cabinet' of research 'curiosities', viewed through a mysterious form of in/organic 'telescope'. Peer inside, look around, and you'll witness compelling moments of insight and inspiration, collected from the heartfelt research and research journeys which framed my prior artworks.

Uncanny Intimacy pursues a curious retro-tech for our age of ‘dark ecologies’: dark places indeed, yet still laced with empowering lights: allowing audiences to travel through sci/art/design journeys - designed to engender a radical empathy for nature's unloved others. Collectively this work (about works) calls for a radical rethinking of ecological ethics, asking what needs to be better understood, re-connected, made intimate, made us, conserved and made flourish; both through imperative and a burning desire for coexistence?

PARTNERS:The Australian Museum (Sandy Ingelby, Anja Divljan & Dave Britton), The Australian Design Centre (Rhadi Bryant) and Lean Productions (Tom Rivard). Keith Armstrong is supported by a part time research role at QUT Creative Industries.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION:“.. this existence that is always coexistence. It's like finding out that the home you've been living in for decades is actually a hotel, and you are just a guest, and there are strangers coming in and out of the lobby”. Morton, Timothy

Uncanny Intimacy presents a hybrid 'cabinet of curiosities', formed from both illuminated objects and uncanny forms that appear within an organic 'telescope'. Peer inside, look around, and you'll be treated to dark layers of moving image, objects and sounds, that strangely emerge, circulate, fade and combine, allowing you to unravel heartfelt journeys into the art and science of ecologies.

What you will witness on the inside are brightest moments of insight and inspiration: collected from my research and research processes. Uncanny Intimacies' curious wooden 'telescope' mediates this vision through a retro-tech combination of modern, obsolete, reused and high tech elements - ironically suited to today's age of ‘dark ecologies’. By re-thinking dark places in an empowering light, audiences can travel themselves through a travelogue of science/art/design journeys designed to engender radical empathy for nature's unloved others.

Most curiously of all, you'll note in there an abiding obsession with the dark worlds of Australia’s iconic flying foxes - our magnificent megabats and their micro bat cousins. The work celebrates soaring alongside these fine creatures - guided by generous teams of scientists and native wildlife rehabilitators who daily study, care and howl for their deaths by a thousand cuts. And yes, we are guilty of mistreating Australia's only flight capable mammals! Uncanny Intimacy's miniaturised and strangely manipulated images therefore suggest our extreme shortness of vision: whilst concurrently celebrating the artists and scientists that choose to go differently - into ‘bat’ for the Chiropteran ‘hand-wings’.

We coexist more easily when it does not offend our limited sensory capacities. But the moment something strange enters our spectra of sight, hearing, smell or taste we start protesting. We are a speciesist nation at heart, forever uncomfortable with uninvited itinerants who move into our delineated patches of dirt. We fly at that which normally lives its lives wrapped in darkness, just outside of our view but within hearing and smell. We become unable to mourn our poor judgments, hastening deaths of the then disregarded. Flying foxes are thus particularly unloved for their tendency for communal conversation, musky attractants and a taste for arboreal foods in our replacement landscapes.

Uncanny Intimacies delaminates a journey of my circling around such questionings. Without suggesting solutions or turning points, the work presents as a revolving travelogue that speaks, gently, to the creative processes behind, beneath and beyond, presenting a loosely choreographed range of artefacts and references generated during the course of the investigations - contrasted with corresponding narratives and illustrating sources. These moments in motion are picked from along a temporal trajectory of the entire project, and sit neither as refined nor complete outcomes. They are but snapshots augmented and interspersed with materials (specimens, microscopy, archival drawings, etc.) from the Australian Museum.

Collectively this work (about works) calls for a radical rethinking of ecological ethics, asking what needs to be better understood, re-connected, made intimate, made us, conserved and made flourish; both through imperative and a burning desire for coexistence?